Survey: After Various Airline Incidents, Many Would Choose Another Airline

A whopping 99.5% of frequent flyers surveyed said they were aware of recent highly publicized incidents involving several major U.S. airlines and almost half said the incident or incidents did affect their feelings about flying with the airline involved.

According to a Frequent Business Traveler GlobeRunner Insights survey, conducted in partnership with FlyerTalk.com, the world’s largest online travel community, and LoungeBuddy, an airport lounge resource app, emotions ran high on the matter.

Clearly, what people read in the headlines and viewed in social media struck a chord. It ran the gamut from Delta’s IT meltdown to United’s dalliances with dress code enforcement and the forced removal of an elderly passenger to American’s strollergate. Indeed, it’s been a parade of airline news practically nonstop for months.

The events resonated both with frequent flyers as well as with millions of people who ordinarily could not care less about the airline industry.

Further, if one were to go solely by what is posted in Facebook and Twitter feeds, it would appear that air travel has become a hellish experience that is miserable at best.

Only more recently have airlines begun to draw a line in the sand and not bow to what to some could appear to be online extortion. JetBlue refused to apologize after removing a family of five from a flight from Florida to New York because of how the parents reportedly interacted with the cabin crew.

The effect that these incidents have had caused many flyers to reevaluate which carriers they will do business with. Almost half of those surveyed, 46.2%, said that the incidents had affected their feelings about their favorite airline.

Out of that group, 86.5% said they would choose a different airline, with 15% saying that they would only resume flying on their favorite airline if they saw “a major change in policy and attitude” and 60% indicated that as long as an alternative existed, they would choose it over their former favorite airline.

Twelve percent said they would simply “not fly on that airline ever again.”

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